lifestyle leader

-David Hale believes the dollar rally is overdone, and argues in the FT that gold, not the euro, will be the short term alternative to the greenback (and inflation hedge of choice) in 2009.

-FP Passport looks at the new American Embassy in Baghdad. Once, US embassies housed cultural centers, English-language libraries and social spaces for the local population. Now, a really high wall and a whole lot of concrete. Architectural historian Jane Loeffler: "If architecture reflects the society that creates it, the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad makes a devastating comment about America’s global outlook."

-Samuel Huntington, giant of political science, died on December 24th at age 81. Huntington's 1993 essay in Foreign Affairs, "The Clash of Civilizations" (later expanded into a book), sparked a global debate on international conflict, religion and the nation-state that still rages today. I have been struck recently by the number of non-IR/IPE people who have not read the essay, especially among those critical of its thesis. It can be found here, and I strongly encourage a (re)reading.